


part of your world

by starkly



Series: you don't have to do this alone [19]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Courtship, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-09 02:20:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13471623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkly/pseuds/starkly
Summary: As a marine biologist, there are certain things Pepper never expects to find when she moves into her new house on the California coast. Namely, mermaids. Mermen, technically, in this particular case, but it’s still a lot to swallow. Even after hanging out with them for weeks, it’s kind of hard to believe they’re real.And yet here she is, being woken up early Saturday morning by the sound of rocks hitting her windows.





	part of your world

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for NaNoWriMo 2017 and posted at [dailyironfamily](http://dailyironfamily.tumblr.com/post/167688826660/day-19-merfolk-au) on tumblr. This fic was proofread before being posted here but is otherwise unchanged.
> 
> Day ninteen: merfolk AU. Featuring Tony and Rhodey as mermen and Pepper as a marine biologist, even though I know nothing about marine biology and it doesn’t feature in this fic. Title obviously taken from Disney's The Little Mermaid.

As a marine biologist, there are certain things Pepper never expects to find when she moves into her new house on the California coast. Namely, mermaids. Mermen, technically, in this particular case, but it’s still a lot to swallow. Even after hanging out with them for weeks, it’s kind of hard to believe they’re real.

And yet here she is, being woken up early Saturday morning by the sound of rocks hitting her windows.

“I’ve told you, if you break my windows I’m going to be mad!” she shouts as she steps out onto her back porch, tightening the sash of her robe around her waist.

Tony smiles and waves up at her, unconcerned. “Pepper! Come down!”

“Give me a minute, okay?” She sighs and goes back inside to get some food and change into her bathing suit. She’s gotten used to these early morning swims by now, so it only takes her a few minutes before she’s ready and heading down to the rocks below her house where here aquatic guests like to sun themselves.

That’s exactly what Tony’s doing now, stretched out over a big rock, his shimmery, dark red tail slapping idly against the side. When he hears her approach he perks up so quickly the momentum of his tail drags him right off the rock and into the water. Pepper just rolls her eyes and walks down the shore to the edge of the water.

“Where’s Rhodey?” she asks when Tony resurfaces and grins at her.

“Here!” Rhodey pops up next to Tony, looking just as enthusiastic as his friend.

Pepper gives them both a suspicious glance. “What’s all this energy for?”

“We have something to show you,” Tony tells her, pulling himself back up onto the rock he’d been sitting on. “Did you bring breakfast?”

She does, in fact, have several granola bars with her, and she wades closer to hand one to him. Rhodey joins Tony on the rock and holds his hand out, and she gives him one too. Unlike Tony’s solid red scales, Rhodey has a blue and gray pattern to his tail, kind of like a lionfish’s stripes.

“You know, I’m pretty sure feeding you all this human food is a mistake,” she says, chewing on her own granola bar. “Your digestive system probably isn’t meant for this kind of stuff.”

“We’ve eaten human food before and we’re not dead yet,” Tony says, shrugging. He finishes his bar in three bites, glancing covetously at Rhodey, who’s eating his at a slower pace.

“Yeah, Tony ate like six hamburgers at once before,” Rhodey adds, twisting away so Tony can’t steal his granola from him. “I still think that should’ve killed you.”

Tony shrugs. “I’m resilient.”

Pepper winces, glad she wasn’t around to see the repercussions of that. “So what do you want to show me?” They don’t have anything with them, which they usually do when they say they want to show her something.

“You have to come with us to see it,” Tony answers.

“That’s…suspicious.”

“It’s a place, not a thing,” Rhodey explains. “I promise it’ll be worth it.”

Pepper purses her lips, studying the two mermen staring back expectantly at her. She’s not stupid, she knows all the myths about mermaids luring sailors into the water and drowning them. But she’s gone swimming with them multiple times before, and neither has tried to drown her yet.

“Is it far?” she asks at last, and Tony low fives Rhodey. “How do you even know that?”

“We watch a lot of people on the beach,” Rhodey replies at the same time Tony says,

“Not far at all. But you probably need your motor ski thing.”

“Jet Ski,” she corrects.

“Whatever. So are you coming?”

Pepper sighs. “I suppose I have to, or you two will pout and throw rocks at my house all day.”

Tony whoops and jumps back into the water, clearly eager to go. Rhodey finishes his granola bar and says, “We’ll wait for you here.”

Pepper troops back up to her garage, getting a waterproof bag and sticking some bottled water in it, then gets her Jet Ski and a life vest. By the time she gets back down to the water and hauls her Jet Ski into the ocean, Tony and Rhodey are impatiently swimming circles around each other.

“Ready?” Tony asks, untangling his tail from Rhodey’s and swimming closer.

“As I’ll ever be,” she says, and the three of them head out.

They lead her down the shoreline, keeping a careful distance so she doesn’t accidentally run over either of them with the Jet Ski. There isn’t much out here in the way of other humans, which she’d specifically looked into when she’d moved into her house. After about ten minutes, they motion for her to follow them into a small bay-like indent between two cliffs.

The water here is clear, and there’s white sand despite their rocky surroundings. She turns off the Jet Ski when the water’s shallow enough, pulling it up onto the sand so it doesn’t float away.

“This is what you wanted to show me?” It’s interesting, but there’s nothing particularly spectacular that she can see.

Tony shakes his head, pointing at the entrance to a cave in the side of one of the cliffs she hadn’t noticed. “In there.”

“Well, that’s not creepy or anything,” she chuckles, but leaves her bag and life vest on the Jet Ski as she gets back into the water. Rhodey swims up beside her, and she smiles at him.

“You’ll love it, I promise,” he says, and she nods and swims with them over to the cave, her curiosity ramped up to eleven at this point.

It looks like a normal cave, wet and lots of rocks. But Tony swims farther in, so she follows him, until he stops and says,

“Rhodey should cover your eyes, it’ll be cooler that way.”

“I can’t swim with his hand on my face,” she protests. “How about I close my eyes and someone directs me?”

Rhodey nods, so she closes her eyes, waiting for some sort of direction, and nearly startles when she feels an arm slide around her waist.

“It’s okay, I won’t let you drown,” he says, and she forces herself to relax and just let Rhodey take her the rest of the way. She can feel his tail brush against her legs as he swims, and that’s somehow almost more embarrassing than the arm around her waist.

After another minute she hears Tony say, “Okay, open your eyes.”

She does, thinking she’ll need a moment to adjust to the darkness, but it’s not dark at all. The whole cave is lit up with some kind of glowing moss, but it’s not just the usual greens. There are blues and reds and purples too, creating a bright rainbow effect as it reflects off the water.

“Holy shit,” she says, eloquently. Tony laughs, stretching out with his hands behind his head.

“Like it?”

“Tony, it’s beautiful.” She swims in a little circle, looking around with wide eyes. Whatever these plants are, she’s never seen anything like them before.

“Wait, check this out too,” he says, and disappears under the water for a few seconds. When he returns, he swims over and takes Pepper’s hand, placing something in her palm.

She looks down at the smooth, opal-like stone in her hand and smiles. “It’s lovely.”

“Hey, I was going to do that,” Rhodey protests, pushing Tony before diving under the water and returning with his own, bigger opal-colored stone. He places it in her hand as well, beaming.

The two of them seem to be…waiting for something, so she glances back down at the stones, then back up and says, “Thank you?”

Apparently that was the wrong thing to say, because both of them look oddly disappointed, so she hastily adds,

“I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because I am very grateful you shared this cave with me, it’s fascinating! But, ah, I think I’m missing something here.”

“I told you she wouldn’t get it,” Rhodey mutters to Tony, who shrugs.

“We’re trying to court you,” Tony explains.

There’s a long period of silence. Tony’s stone slides out of her hand and nobody catches it, though Tony frowns as it sinks down to the cave floor.

“ _Court me_?” Pepper says after a long moment of trying to find her voice, which comes out overly shrill.

“Humans have courting, don’t they?” Rhodey asks, while Tony dives down again and brings back another shiny stone for her.

“Um,” she says loudly. “They do?”

“Are you asking us or telling us?” Tony says.

“Maybe we should forget it,” Rhodey says slowly, reaching out to take his stone back, but Tony grabs his wrist before he can.

“We didn’t hear her answer yet,” he points out.

Pepper realizes she should probably say something that’s not just panicked babbling. “So you’re…both trying to court me? Am I supposed to pick whoever brings me the biggest, nicest rock or something?”

Rhodey picks his head. “You don’t have to pick. You just have to say yes or no.”

Tony, who seems to have realized the crux of the issue, says, “Oh! It’s both of us or neither of us. We’re asking together. Do humans not do that?”

“Not most of them,” Pepper says faintly, and frowns when both Tony and Rhodey look dejected.

“Shit, we overstepped, didn’t we. I’m sorry,” Tony says, quiet. He’s the one who reaches out to take his stone back this time, but Pepper quickly closes her hand around both stones, holding them close to her chest.

“No!” She clears her throat, trying again without shouting this time and hoping she’s doing it right. “No, I, uh, this was really nice of you. To bring me here. And I love both these rocks. So…I would be honored to have you both court me?”

“Seriously?” Tony says, looking surprised.

She nods. “I like both of you, and if you like me, then sure. Let’s give it a try.”

Rhodey laughs, swooping in and pulling her close for a hug. Tony throws his arms around both of them, giving Rhodey a little kiss over her shoulder.

“I kind of assumed you two were an item,” Pepper confesses, smiling as the two mermen hug her. “I wouldn’t have wanted to come between you.”

“We’d been arguing about the best way to ask you for two weeks now,” Rhodey tells her, tucking his tail underneath her so she can stand on it and not have to tread water between them.

“Guess we need to teach you a few more things about merfolk,” Tony says, grinning.

Pepper sighs and leans her head back against Tony’s shoulder, looking up at the brightly colored ceiling. “I’d like that very much.”


End file.
